


Not Every Story

by squanderbird



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: (for a change), F/M, angstfest!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 15:50:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squanderbird/pseuds/squanderbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, there was the most ridiculous story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Every Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tierfal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/gifts).



i. 

Once upon a time, there was the most ridiculous story, rotting apart at the seams with saccharine clichés and fanciful notions and perhaps the cruellest thing of all – memories of what once was. 

This story was the oldest story ever told, repeating itself over and over as moons cycled around planets that all cried to be saved. It was a never-ending saga that spanned and traced itself out endlessly amongst the stars that glittered like broken glass; exquisite diamonds made of rock and ash and dirt, bright and cold and unforgiving. 

The story was love. 

ii.

There was a girl. She was your averagely-intelligent young woman with a skull full of dreams and little else; quite pretty, nice smile, bright clothes, normal boyfriend and a loud mother. A girl dragged kicking and screaming into the harshness of adulthood before she was ready to go. A girl stuck in a department store, folding soft expensive cardigans up for customers and waiting for the day she would feel alive.   
And then one day she saw a mannequin army marching and try to kill her, and she met a dark-eyed man who told her to _run, Rose Tyler_ , and the world would never look quite so ordinary again. 

iii.

There was a Time Lord, the scientific alien version of a Prince Charming only really kind of not, and his main preoccupation was saving lives and travelling along the rifts in space with the aid of a little blue box. Because he saved lives, he called himself a doctor.   
He was far too old for her and far too dangerous, so of course she fell in love with him, just a little, and then when he opened his eyes in a new body, she fell in love with him a little more. 

After all, those were really nice Converse. 

iv.

And they travelled together; this world and a thousand others, and they fought monsters conjured straight from a comic book nightmare, and sometimes there was others with them – the normal boyfriend uncomfortably playing at being a crowd of three, a man with a swagger and a coat and an accent who literally could not be got rid of, had a rather unfortunate habit of not staying dead when he was supposed to. But eventually they left, abandoned back on Earth and it was just the two of them, Rose Tyler and the Doctor, the Time Lord and his plus one, like this was the way it should always be forever after. 

v.

There was a wall and a world between them, and screaming wouldn't break it, but she tried anyway, slamming hands until the knuckles were bloody. Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, and a thousand promises not spoken, a thousand words not said, and what was the point of saving everything if it all ended here? 

And the man who had forgotten what his own name – the name a clever-eyed child had been gifted when he breathed in life for the first of many times, the name that had been lost to the centuries - sounded like in another person's mouth, the man who had seen his world and his people burn, the man who was not really a man at all, leant miserably against the cold white wall to listen to the painful concerto inside his chest, the sound of both his hearts breaking. 

vi.

All those lives, all those loves, all those people dragged back from the very edge of Certain Doom and Destruction, and when it came down to it, it was all about a human girl called Rose Tyler.

It didn't surprise him. 

It had always been about Rose. 

vii.

A beach, a goodbye, a broken communication link, and it is not voiced but still left lingering. 

She knows anyway. 

viii.

New assistant, new monsters, new and inventive attempts to Destroy Mankind. 

He wonders what she's doing. 

ix.

The sea is a whisking skirt of frothy grey lace. They sit amongst the rocks, enfolded in each other like origami birds, breath mingling, and he tells her stories of their life amongst the stars, enough to make her believe, bit by bit by tiny bit, that she hasn't been shut up with a consolation prize. 

Enough to make her believe that not all stories end with the two lovers parted; because, sometimes, they find their way back to each other, sometimes, there is a beginning, announced with a _finally_ kiss.


End file.
